Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 - 360 - Preview

E3 2009 Preview

Imagine playing as your favorite
Marvel superhero, one of the good guys, but instead of fighting the villains,
you are fighting other heroes. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Fusion is a clash of
ideologies rather than good versus evil.

The base story is not hard to
follow: The Superhuman Registration Act becomes law and all super-empowered
individuals must register as weapons of mass destruction, becoming licensed
government agents. As you might understand, some of those in the Marvel universe
do not care for that idea and find themselves at odds with those who support it.
Iron Man leads the Pro-Registration side while Captain America spearheads the
stand on Anti-Registration. What this creates is two storylines based on moral
choices that the players make.

The game was shown as a live demo at
the Activision pre-E3 event held in May in Los Angeles. The dev team reps on
hand stated that there were four key pillars upon which the game was built:

There are 24 playable characters
right out of the box and that playable characters this go-round will include
Deadpool, Venom and Juggernaut.

The storyline forces the players to
make a moral choice

Power fusion is a new game mechanic
that allows game characters to combine abilities for powerful attacks

It’s a fun pick-up-and-play
role-playing experience

The game also has a few
idiosyncrasies that may delight gamers. For example, Deadpool knows he is a
character in a video-game and steps totally outside of the storyline at times
with dialogue directed to the players.

The graphics engine for the game has
been totally revamped and MUA 2 Fusion will allow for four-player cooperative
gaming.

While there are some new elements to
the game, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Fusion does not step too far away from its
predecessor in terms of general gameplay. This should still prove to be a
challenging and entertaining experience that not only looks solid (based on the
played demo), but might have players engaging a little bit of the cerebral
matter in addition to controller prowess.